logoalt Hacker News

ivanjermakovtoday at 2:35 PM1 replyview on HN

> The native module is a prebuilt binary that auto-downloads on first use

Why? Keep it a part of distribution.


Replies

dakratoday at 3:01 PM

That's because MELPA (and ELPA) doesn't have a way to attach platform specific files. It's all just git checkouts.

That means we would have to check in the module binary for all platforms (>10MB together) if we want that it comes with the distribution.

Also looking at e.g. jinx, another popular package that uses Emacs native modules, it does it like vterm and offers to compile on first usage.

So as a Emacs package author, for a user friendly installation you can realistically only offer to download or compile on first use.